Voting Machine In Pennsylvania Keeps Screwing Up Dude’s Vote

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Wanna hear a joke? Did you hear the one where George Bush got elected over Al Gore because of some alleged “hanging chads?” Not to be a hippie, but because Mercury was in retrograde at the time (and Mercury is retrograde now) all these astrologists are frightened that a similar circumstance is going to happen tonight.

For all you who don’t know what it means when Mercury is in retrograde, the short story is that technological and communication chaos ensues.

And whether you are Democrat, Republican, or one of those other parties, you have to admit: the race is pretty darn close. So, when stuff like machines rejecting a vote starts happening, it’s really awkward for both parties.

Such was the case in Pennsylvania. A dude kept pressing his vote for Obama, but the machine kept registering his vote as Romney. He took a video of it (which we aren’t sure is technically illegal in his state, but it’s illegal in lots of other ones!) as proof. Illegal and yet oh-so-telling. There should be a law against prosecuting people who are just trying to fix a problem that could POSSIBLY CHANGE EVERYTHING.

“I initially selected Obama but Romney was highlighted. I assumed it was being picky so I deselected Romney and tried Obama again, this time more carefully, and still got Romney. Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode. I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I deselected her and started at the top of Romney’s name and started tapping very closely together to find the ‘active areas’. From the top of Romney’s button down to the bottom of the black checkbox beside Obama’s name was all active for Romney. From the bottom of that same checkbox to the bottom of the Obama button (basically a small white sliver) is what let me choose Obama. Stein’s button was fine. All other buttons worked fine.”

“I asked the voters on either side of me if they had any problems and they reported they did not. I then called over a volunteer to have a look at it. She him hawed for a bit then calmly said “It’s nothing to worry about, everything will be OK.” and went back to what she was doing. I then recorded this video.”

What do you think? Lots of people think that machines are bad news for votes because they can be hacked. We’re going with a simple faulty system, but your awesome conspiracy theories are welcome in the comments!